


Heart Still Beating

by berlin_by_sea



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sherlolly - Freeform, an utterly cliched name but what the hey, and much much more, emotional angst but some laughs too, warstan wedding planning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-06 01:32:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5397872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlin_by_sea/pseuds/berlin_by_sea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"On his return, she couldn’t help but note that under the bluster, some of the hard edges had been rubbed smooth and others had eroded away altogether to reveal hints of tantalizing vulnerability beneath that she steadfastly refused to be taken in by."</p><p>An interlude set during 'The Sign of Three'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I really felt that Sherlock's acceptance of the unsolved mystery of The Bloody Guardsman was too easily given and set out to explore what might have happened on the rest of that day.
> 
> The hugely sappy title comes from the Roxy Music song 'While My Heart's Still Beating', because I've been giving the 'Avalon' album a lot of play during the writing process. Perhaps some of my wording echoes the songs on the album, as well.

Prologue

____________________________________________________________________________

By the time that John had finally gotten to shower off the residual stickiness of Private Bainbridge’s blood and change into some spare clothes he’d apparently left behind when decamping from Baker St to Mary’s, Sherlock had established himself in the middle of the sitting room floor with a pile of what turned out to be, on closer inspection, assorted darts, needles, arrows, bolts and even a crossbow, and was now muttering to himself furiously.

“Your turn for the shower, mate,” John offered from the kitchen doorway.

“Can’t. Busy.” Sherlock returned, sliding a slim gauge screwdriver into what looked suspiciously like The Poison Giant’s blowpipe.

Rolling his eyes, John turned to fill the kettle for a much-needed cuppa. “I suppose if you want to sit around covered in blood, that’s your lookout,” he called, affecting a casual tone. “Give the press a bit of a show on the way out, though,” he added, referring to their intention to stop in on the Yard to offer statements for the official investigation into Bainbridge’s attempted murder now that John had tidied himself up.

“Fine!” Sherlock growled, dragging himself into standing position. He stomped towards the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

From the kitchen, John allowed himself a small chuckle at the success of his tantrum-taming tactic.

At least until he noticed that Sherlock had taken the crossbow with him.

____________________________________________________________________________

“A snit? A SNIT?!?” bellowed Sherlock, causing John and Lestrade to wince as his voice echoed within the confines of Lestrade’s office. “I am in no way in a snit!”

“As I was saying,” John continued, ignoring the consulting pain-in-the-ass’ theatrics. “His Lordship’s gotten himself into a snit – yes, a snit,” he clarified with a silencing gesture in Sherlock’s direction, “over the lack of clues and the unsolved mystery-“

“Presently unsolved!” Sherlock bit out indignantly. “Temporarily!”

“The unsolved mystery,” John continued, “of The Bloody Guardsman.”

“That what you’re calling it?” Lestrade asked. “It’s good,” he conceded with a nod.

“Hah!” Sherlock scoffed.

“Can’t win ‘em all,” Lestrade offered to Sherlock prosaically with a shrug.

“Evidently,” Sherlock sneered and his meaning was clear.

“I still haven’t forgiven you for the Waters gang,” Lestrade warned with a frown. “Don’t start with me. There’s still enough bad blood from before that I could rustle up a decent team to search your flat as soon as there’s a warrant.”

Sherlock didn’t deign to reply, though he did raise a scornful eyebrow to signal his contempt.

“Are there really no leads?” Anderson interjected from the corner where he’d hereto been sitting silently, looking hopefully towards Sherlock. 

“I’ve one or two,” Sherlock announced, pivoting to retrieve his crossbow from Lestrade’s desk. “Based on the placement of the air conditioning ducts, it’s possible that a very small assassin could have lain in wait-“

“God, not again!” John moaned, recalling the debacle with The Poison Giant.

“As I was saying-“ Sherlock enunciated pointedly. “I intend the map the trajectory of projectiles comprised of frozen matter to establish their probable success as murder weapons. At an angle of approximately 48 degrees,” he said, arranging the crossbow with a demonstrative flourish, “it is just possible that-“

Sherlock was rather miffed that his later assurances that he was definitely not aware of the precarious nature of the trigger were only half believed. Especially as it was mostly – well, at least partially – true.  
____________________________________________________________________________  


It was agreed in a later review of health and safety measures for Met staff that the event reinforced the need for all authorised firearm officers to receive ongoing training for treating other ballistic injuries, as well as the far more standard gunshot wounds they were used to encountering. Anderson was praised for his precision in removing the crossbow bolt that had lodged in Lestrade’s shoulder and in his report to The Empty Hearse, he modestly noted that it was fortunate that the penetration of bone bolt in the area was only superficial and that despite being several hundred years old, that the hand-carved bolt had not shattered.

As John related later to Mary, Lestrade’s face after he was shot helped him to finally appreciate the decision to gown the bridesmaids in lilac rather than puce.


	2. One

____________________________________________________________________________

“In the corner and keep your mouth shut,” Sally directed as she and Sherlock entered the lab, prompting Molly to raise her head in surprise.

Sherlock shuffled towards a stool that sat abandoned in the corner near the requisite fire extinguisher, silent but with a mutinous expression. Molly was shocked to note the chains that looped from his cuffed hands to shackled feet.

“I’m on freak minding duty,” Sally drawled, propping her hip against the bench top next to Molly.

Molly felt her lips purse with annoyance at the Inspector’s choice of wording and such was their relationship that Sally immediately detected Molly’s displeasure.

“He shot Lestrade!” she stated defensively.

“Accidentally,” Sherlock muttered from his corner.

“With a crossbow!” Sally added.

“Oh, God!” Molly exclaimed, casting Sherlock a horrified look. “Is he okay?”

“He’s upstairs getting patched up. Lucky for him-“ Sally inclined her head towards Sherlock, “Greg didn’t want to go to A&E. Or press charges,” she added, and her disappointment was clear. “Anyways, we’re all sick of him down the station and his sidekick’s abandoned him, so I was hoping I could leave him here with you.”

Molly mentally reviewed her remaining workload for the shift and bit her lip considering how she would manage to entertain Sherlock while processing the list of jobs waiting from the Met.

Her hesitation prompted a low hum of annoyance from Sherlock.

“I told him either you had to agree to take over watching him or he was going in the cells,” Sally said, evidently cheerful at the prospect of the consulting detective imprisoned.

“Well, I am busy, but I wouldn’t want Sherlock stuck in a cell,” Molly conceded. Sighing, she turned to him. “I suppose you can stay there if you behave,” she said, striving for a firm tone. She knew the minute Sally left, he’d be wheedling her for concessions she shouldn’t make, but she didn’t have it in her to say no.

“Oh, he’ll behave,” Sally laughed. “I’m leaving the chains.”

Sherlock opened his mouth to protest, but Sally cut him off with a wagging finger. “Uh-uh. Or you’ll go in the lock-up.”

He subsided with a pout.

“Have you got somewhere out of the way you can put him?” Sally asked. “I’d go for a body bag myself.”

Molly snorted her amusement, though it was quickly stifled by a surge of guilt.

“I don’t mind the company in here,” she said.

“I don’t think so,” Sally said, “He’s put enough people out with his antics.”

Molly mentally reviewed the layout of the lab and remembered the records room tucked away adjacent the main teaching space. It was within earshot of the lab with the two doors between open, but there was sufficient distance for her to be able to work without scrutiny. Or commentary. Or appealing looks designed to manipulate her. The space was also spartan and uncomfortable enough to satisfy Sally’s need for a prison environment. With the files all digitised nowadays, there wasn’t a lot of call for the folders of historical records that filled the shelves, though Molly utilized them occasionally to show the progression of information storage to the students. Recalling the brisk temperature – the heating vents were diverted so as to maintain a constant slight chill to prevent the paper mildewing – and the mingled smells of dust and old paper, she shivered in sympathy at the notion of stashing Sherlock in there. 

_He did shoot Greg,_ she reminded herself.

_And he gets away with everything._

That she couldn’t deny. In his time, Sherlock had convinced her to do quite a lot for his benefit against her better judgement and now that John had less time to devote to keeping him out of mischief, Molly supposed that Sherlock could do with a lesson in considering others.

“There’s the records room…” she found herself saying, ignoring the look of betrayal from Sherlock.

“Perfect!” Sally chirped.

“Bring your stool,” Molly said to Sherlock, watching as he attempted to get a secure grip on it with his chained hands, before leading he and Sally through the lab doors and instruction space. 

Unlocking the records room door, she winced at the burst of musty, frigid air and fumbled in the dark for the light switch. A heavy metal cabinet sat against one wall and Molly knew it to be full of some of the more obscure specimens. A number of heavy shelves were cramped into the rest of the space, holding the records as well as a number of teaching texts and a handful of theses from previous Barts postgrads. There was enough space inside the doorway for Sherlock to deposit his stool and Sally took advantage of a large, protruding pipe to loop Sherlock’s chains around the base that abutted the wall. She omitted the leg shackles when there was insufficient length to loop the chain around the pipe while allowing Sherlock to sit, but deftly wove the length through the aluminium piping that formed the frame of the stool and around the pipe with an almost sadistic enthusiasm and professional technique.

Molly watched Sherlock accept that his tether was only just long enough for an extremely limited stride with a set jaw and a stony face. She bit back her natural instinct to protest his captivity.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” Sally said, handing her two small keys on a thin wire hoop. “He stays here until I text to let him go.”

To Sherlock, she added: “And that’ll be when I’m good and ready.”

“Or you need me,” Sherlock shot back.

Sally growled in response. “Just for that, I’ll add a couple of hours.” Turning back to Molly, she said: “I’m going to call central Barts security and tell them to call 999 on the freak if they find him walking around.”

With that, she edged past Molly through the doorway with a quick “Ta!” and strolled away whistling merrily, leaving Molly to face her captive reluctantly.

“I’m sorry, Sherlock,” she began, but he interrupted her.

“I’d like to be alone, thank you, Molly,” he announced in a proud tone, turning as far as he could on his short tether to face the wall.


	3. Two

The silent treatment didn’t last long.

“Molly!” came a shout fifteen or so minutes after she’d set up her station with a tray of desiccated bone shards she was tracing the origins of. While the work wasn’t urgent, she had allocated herself time that afternoon to tick the preliminary analysis off the list, and she rolled her eyes at the typical high-needs antics of the consulting detective.

“What, Sherlock?” she yelled back, refusing to fall into her usual indulgent pattern of behaviour.

“I’m cold,” was the plaintive reply.

Suppressing a smile, she wandered into the records room. Even with the door open, the temperature hadn’t improved much with the introduction of warmer air from the lab and Molly eyed Sherlock warily. “Where’s your coat?” she asked, her eyes tracing the pristine white cotton pulled taut over Sherlock's shoulders and biceps quite without her permission. With his arms secured behind his back, his shoulders appeared even broader than usual and she refused to let her eyes follow the imperiled placket of buttons straining to unify the two hemispheres of cotton covering his chest.

“Donovan seized it before she chained me for fear I’d get free,” he conceded after a pause and Molly had to acknowledge the logic in that; having seen the sorts of equipment he kept bundled up in his pockets. Molly also had to acknowledge that her inner perv was rather enjoying the absence of the Belstaff - captivity definitely suited Sherlock. _Or unsuited him._

Mentally, she smacked down said inner perv and set to reviewing the contents of her locker; she reasoned that there must be something in there to offset the chill. “I’ve got a-“ she started.

“No,” he interjected. “No jumper, no cardigans.” His obvious shudder on the final word did away with any charitable inclinations she had, even with the accompanying clank of his chains with the movement.

“Fine,” she replied, turning for the door with a nonchalant shrug. 

She relished the offended gasp her captive made as she departed and returned to the collection of brittle bone fragments awaiting their turn under the microscope. When Lestrade had apologetically passed over the jar of pieces handed in by a justifiably alarmed member of the public who’d turned them up while settling a relative’s estate, Molly understood the concern that motivated him to pass them on for specialist testing even while she rued the fact that the students she’d usually fob the task off on were on their mid-term break. Sherlock, of course, had coveted the contents of the jar and scoffed at the idea that they should be treated as a source of worry rather than a means of entertainment for him between cases. Mike had locked them into a cupboard in an attempt to silence Sherlock’s wheedling, but Molly was sure it was a matter of time before he succeeded in begging some samples for his own experiments. Or he made off with the whole jar.

“Molly, coffee?” came a forlorn inquiry from beyond the lab space.

_Speak of the devil._

“No, Sherlock, I’m working,” she retorted.

“Tea?” was the feeble rejoinder.

Huffing out an audible sigh for his benefit ( _the hearing of a bloody bat, that one_ ), she cast her eye to the clock and tried to calculate how much work she’d get done if she failed to appease Sherlock and head off a later tantrum.

“Earl Grey, if you’d be so kind,” he added in what was obviously supposed to be a modest tone, as if he could hear her decision.

“Smug git,” she muttered; banking on Sherlock’s super senses ensuring that he could hear her as she snatched up her personal tea stash on the way out the door.

____________________________________________________________________________

Very few things served to make Sherlock Holmes feel penitent.

John’s explosive tirade and subsequent storming off mouthing dire threats from between clenched teeth did make Sherlock feel…uneasy…about having (accidentally) shot Lestrade, but mental recreation of the scene was a more constructive use of his intellectual energy than remorse and so he let John’s ire roll off his back like so much water on the proverbial duck.

Lestrade’s apparent agony and creative curses when Sherlock had merely quirked a brow and drawled a sceptical “Really?” at all the yelping and groaning did also cause a twinge of regret, but Sherlock reasoned that he’d been forgiven things nearly as bad in the past and the balance of probability suggested that friendship and prolonged exposure to the Sherlock Holmes Experience (plus gratitude, if they were all honest) would cause George to grin and bear it, so to speak. Plus, career plods – as Graham was – were supposed to love showing scars and swapping stories and hadn’t Sherlock shot a very nice feather (really quite harmlessly) into his cap with the crossbow and bone bolt? If anything, the only thing that genuinely gave him pause on that front was how soon he might be able to convince Geoff to allow him to examine the wound and eventual scarring to reconcile his suspicions with his fortuitous (but assuredly very accidental) experimental results.

Surprisingly, Sherlock had had to admit that the literally cold reserve he was currently enduring from Molly ‘The Epitome of Timid’ Hooper was almost enough to make him feel sorry for his actions. He was unused to being held accountable for his lack of manners by his efficacious, little pathologist ( _except that one time, with the dress and the kiss on the cheek and he didn’t like to let himself remember it too often_ ) and curiously, being out of her good graces gave him an unusual feeling in his chest. 

Looking down at said chest, he did have to question whether the unusual feeling was the goose bumps rising on his exposed flesh and dare he mention, his _nipples_ actually being rendered hard from the intolerable chill. He was usually quite well insulated by the Belstaff and didn’t have to address primitive biological concerns, such as his humiliatingly sensitized nipples being chafed by the weave of his shirt in Arctic climes such as he suffered in the records room. Maybe he shouldn’t have declined Molly’s potential offer of a cardigan – even if it was the cherry one. _Especially if it was the cherry one, and the faint floral smell of Molly lingered around the collar…_

She bustled into the room just then carrying a mug of milky tea, bedecked with a drinking straw, and an unflatteringly severe expression on her face. In some part, the tea had been a ruse to see if he could convince his unwitting captor to release his hands, though the added warmth would have been appreciated. The straw ruled that possibility out and now he swallowed back the… _alarm?_ … that arose from the thought that Molly would be true to her word and leave him chained up like an animal.

Eyeing him from head to toe, Sherlock watched Molly size him up ( _as if she didn’t know exactly how tall he was in relation to her minuscule frame_ ) and he sank onto the hateful, sagging stool before she could open her mouth to tell him to. Order him to. Another odd feeling coalesced at the idea, but rather more southerly than in his chest.

“Open up,” she mumbled, avoiding his eyes. 

_There it was again._

Obediently, he parted his lips and allowed Molly to awkwardly wiggle the straw between them. Her palms were cupped around the mug, presumably to avoid slopping the contents down his front, and Sherlock was forced to pursue the shaft of the straw with his tongue. Eventually, he caught it and was attempting to angle his head to make use of it, when Molly gave a frustrated sigh _and slid a hand up his neck and her fingers into his hair to tilt him into the right position_. Unable to cope with the sensations – the weight, the texture, the heat of the delicate extremities and the accompanying sizzle of nerve endings alight after the inadvertent caress – and the coordination required to drink with a straw, Sherlock of course choked and coughed up a scalding mouthful of tea down himself. Causing him to jump up in shock and jostle Molly; close as she was. 

“Eek!” Molly flinched and recoiled, managing to upend the remaining tea onto them both. 

_My abasement is complete_ , he thought, closing his eyes at the sight of Molly fussing with the soaked viscose clinging to her chest to focus on the stinging of his burned skin instead. 

Retreating into his mind palace allowed him to compartmentalize the physical discomfort and breathe through the relative pain, as he had in the past when he was being tortured with brass knuckles. Or his parents’ line dancing music. It also allowed him to try and develop some distance from his degradation, such as when Mycroft had caught him once with a hypodermic needle still penetrating the vulnerable skin and veins of his inner elbow. 

Eventually, he realigned his consciousness and ‘came to’ to find Molly gently dabbing at his chest with paper towels and a look of great determination. 

Still refusing to meet his eyes. 

She was just pressing the wet cotton into the irritated skin, actually, and only serving to make him feel more discomforted. 

“You’ll, ah, have to open my shirt,” he managed, mouth dry. Voice rasping, but hopefully it could pass for pain. 

He noted the slight inclination of Molly’s head intended as a nod, then she sucked in a breath and put the paper towel aside to carefully ease his top button out of its mooring and part the wet cotton incrementally. More dabbing, this time with dampened towel. Slowly. Carefully. _Teasingly?_ He took in what he could of her expression and rejected the idea with strange reluctance. 

One by one, she freed several of his buttons and mopped him up with minute attention. His lungs felt more and more constricted the closer she got to his waistband, until he realised that he trembled with the force of trying to regulate the inhalations and exhalations, and held the oxygen in an effort to divert it to his brain. Where it was clearly much needed. 

“It hurts a lot,” Molly said, more a statement than a question. Her eyes darted up to meet his finally and he was confronted with her own embarrassment and sorrow at her perception that she’d injured him. 

He winced at the barrage of emotion she’d unleashed involuntarily and she bit her lip, eyes welling; his reaction apparently misunderstood. 

“No,” he croaked, as adamant as he could manage. 

“Liar,” she mumbled. A single crystalline tear meandered down her cheek. The impact, as it always did with her, winded him and he tensed against the instinctual sense of having disappointed her. As always. 

“Dr Hooper?” a voice enquired from the direction of the lab then, cutting through the atmosphere of tension in the tiny room. With a sigh, Molly stepped away to meet the speaker and Sherlock bolted a steadying breath. 

“Everything okay, Dr Hooper?” A man, mid-twenties, Northern-born and raised by at least one parent and/or guardian from the Caribbean. 

“Oh, yes,” Molly said, with a nervous twitter. ‘I spilled my tea.” 

“Do you need help?” politely ignoring the awkwardness, patience born of respect and habituation with Molly’s gentle friendliness. 

“No, I’m okay, Agwe. Thank you, though.” 

Sherlock could almost hear the answering smile. 

“Sergeant Donovan said I have to check on Mr Holmes,” the man – Agwe – added. Sherlock thought he recalled one face from the horde of fairly anonymous security personnel employed by the hospital and recalled expressions of deference to Lestrade and Donovan on more than one occasion. _Typical._

“In here,” Sherlock called, keen to get the inevitable encounter out of the way. 

Agwe paced cautiously towards the doorway and confronted the scene before him – Sherlock chained to a pipe, shirt wet and clinging open to his navel. Abandoned tea mug now right side up on the floor, paper towel lay over a small puddle; by now discoloured with absorption. 

“I made rather a lot of mess when I spilled the tea,” Molly said haltingly from behind Agwe. 

The younger man shot Sherlock a smirk but held back a reply. 

“As long as you’re okay, Doctor Hooper,” Agwe said and placated by her murmured assurances, Sherlock heard his boot steps – _favours the left leg due to a long-term muscular injury caused by football? No, hacky sack?_ – fade as they proceeded down the hall. 

“I’m going to get a towel,” Molly murmured from just outside the doorway and then her ridiculously light footsteps pattered away too. 

As soon as he was sure he was alone in the lab, Sherlock dropped his head back against the imprisoning pipe with a groan. Aside from the exigencies of his awkward position, he could feel his frame still wracked with a foreign tension. His forearms strained against the handcuffs and he struggled to ease the tightness of his shoulders. 

This was why he forbade himself from getting too close to Molly. Well, not _this_ exactly: the being-chained-to-a-pole-and-forced-to-drink-through-a-straw-under-duress _this_. More _this_ in the sense of this awful awareness of her that he endured. The exerting considerable effort to keep his hands to himself _this_. Something about her begged to be stroked; for him to trace the delicate edges of the shell of her ears, or the ridges of her clavicle with grazing fingertips. To catalogue her assorted textures with the leisure of a connoisseur delectating. To link his index finger and thumb around the fragile joint of her wrist to map her petite dimensions. To band his arms around her to press her against him. To hold her there. 

It wasn’t even sexual. Well, it wasn’t _entirely_ sexual – he couldn’t deny to himself that he’d entertained considerations of _soft, sweet, little Molly_ in that capacity. But he wanted to traverse her, to explore the delicious hollows and crevices. He wanted to kiss her cheek and give into the urge to _nuzzle_. 

She’d let him, he was convinced. 

Or she would have, once. Now there was Tom, a perfectly bland specimen of humanity if there ever was one. 

And that’s what made the awareness awful. Before, he’d passed her over, strung her along because it didn’t occur to him to consummate the flirtation. Not when there was The Work to be done. But then he’d been forcible distracted from it for so long that he knew the sky wouldn’t fall if he didn’t immerse himself in it absolutely. Before, the neutral pinky-red lipstick, the careful braids and hopeful little smiles were inconsequential in the scheme of things, but now they were uncomfortably enticing. Now, he’d faced desolation, the deprivation of life as he knew it and it had opened his eyes to the merits of one Molly Hooper. Now, he wanted. Wanted and yearned and fixated a bit, to be honest. 

But he _mustn't_. 

Before, he wouldn’t, now he _couldn’t_. 

He was sure this was the very definition of frustration and it couldn’t be borne. But it had to be. 

He wasn’t so cavalier that he could deliberately contribute to/cause the break-up of Molly’s engagement for his own potential gain, but he wasn’t so cold and indifferent that he didn’t loathe and deplore the emotional mire he found himself in.  
There was no point agonizing over this because there’d never be anything more than it. In fact, it would only get worse when Molly added what was sure to be an inadequate and shoddily-fashioned wedding band to the sparkling chip of second rate diamond already gracing her finger. Inevitably moved out of London to procreate and parent a bland little family with Tom. Was lost to him, even professionally, for good. 

_This_ he must accept and he would. Eventually. 

But it was damned hard to will yourself cold and emotionally infertile with the sentiments welling and seeping out of the cracks in his façade, even as they’d been dormant for so long. Once upon a time, there was relief in the form of a chemical shield to soften the impact. The sentiments and sensations that bombarded him now - all bright and sharp and frighteningly inclined to heighten with stress – were constant and confronting. There was no ignoring them, not now that he had obligations by way of his interpersonal relationships. But he didn’t really want to ignore them; for he’d fought so hard for what and who he had that it seemed counter-productive. He wanted to show affection to John and Mary, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade. 

__Molly._ _

It terrified him. 

It also made him even more acutely aware of his loneliness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was a long un'!


	4. Chapter 4

“Molly, love?”

She could hear that he was out at some pub or other, he’d said as much that morning about his plans and as usual, she’d sort of tuned out the details. She was doing it more and more of late and refused to contemplate the implications.

“Molls?” Tom prompted after her lack of reply.

“I just wanted to tell you that I love you,” she returned, forcing a cheerful note into her voice. Feeling like the biggest bitch in the world for using him as a talisman against her withered but very much still active crush/infatuation/hopeless love for Sherlock.

“Love you too, Molls,” he answered. Automatically. Robotically?

“Well, uh, I’ll let you get back to it,” she said,. “I’ll see you at home.”

“’Kay, love,” came the response, echoed by a roar of cheering at the pub. “Bye, bye.”

Molly pulled the phone from her ear and watched the call disconnect. She’d always disliked the way Tom ended calls with “Bye, bye,” as if he were a child. And she hated the way that he never called, always texted or emailed, so that she always had to call him if she didn’t want to have to wait for a response. Like Sherlock. At first, the parallel was somehow comforting and maybe some sort of inadvertent and perverse behavioural training from her time with the consulting detective had made her accept the habit even though it set her teeth on edge. Now, it just annoyed her. Like a lot about Tom these days.

Getting home as she often did around dawn, when the sky was the usual bleached grey of early morning London, she’d crawl into bed with him and muse over how his body heat never seemed to fully reach her side of the bed. It was a metaphor for something, surely. She’d get just far enough into her sleep cycle so that when he woke up and began crashing around the flat as he got ready for work, every bang and slam ricocheted through her half-asleep ears like gunshots and she consigned herself to not getting any rest until he was out the door and far away. There had to another metaphor in there somewhere too.

Nobody was perfect: she made bad jokes, after all, and had little to no fashion sense. She was a rubbish dancer. She had inadequate cleavage. A small mouth. And she got far too emotionally invested in people who were apparently blind to her unwavering loyalty. And took it for granted. But even small, badly dressed emotional masochists had to be allowed to have certain things. Like a more or less decent bloke, a wedding that was nothing like her dreams but roughly in line with expectation and the current trends, as well as the ability to go to work and not be casually decimated by the great Sherlock Holmes.

Every time she thought she had successfully inured herself against his crystalline eyes, his long, blunt fingers and the way his voice made her hot and weak, he always managed to lay siege to her defenses and crumble them without even trying. Just by being. His compliments had always been half-assed and in hindsight, that she suspended disbelief enough to be won over by them was more a testament to her lack of spine than his ability to flirt.

His two years of ‘death’ had been a relief, really. Breathing room from the Sherlock Holmes Experience. She’d felt more herself then than in any time before that she could remember. She’d felt present and capable. Not diminished. She’d met Tom and steadfastly refused to let herself think about when Sherlock came back. For it was a definite ‘when’ – she had undying faith in his ability to not only survive, but to thrive like a weed. Despite that one emotional lapse before his fall, Sherlock had always come across as utterly confident to the point of unyieldingness. Autistic, maybe? She’d just accepted it as intrinsically him, either way. On his return, she couldn’t help but note that under the bluster, some of the hard edges had been rubbed smooth and others had eroded away altogether to reveal hints of tantalizing vulnerability beneath that she steadfastly refused to be taken in by.

And yet, that afternoon at Shilcott’s had effectively laid waste to any real progress she’d made in Sherlock’s absence. When she finally got home, she’d bolted a glass of red wine, sipped another while she cried in the shower and then fucked her fiancé to remind herself of the life she’d been determinedly assembling. When Tom had passed out in a post-coital stupor, she finished the rest of the wine in the kitchen under the judgmental scrutiny of her cat.

“Immune, immune, immune,” she’d chanted to herself in a whisper.

The irony of trying not to wake her fiance with her attempts to convince herself that she was cured of her pathetic crush on another man were enough to make her stagger back to bed. The symbol of accepting responsibility for her choices.  
She was wavering in her resolution and it made her sick with guilt.


End file.
